Category: Topoisomerase

Genetic studies of serogroup 6 isolates of identified putative serotype 6E. illustrates the difficulties of assigning new bacterial serotypes based on genetic findings alone. INTRODUCTION is a Gram-positive bacterial species capable of producing more than 90 distinct capsule types (1). Due to the significance of as a human pathogen the capsule diversity of pneumococci has been extensively studied serologically biochemically and genetically (1). In 2006 the genetic loci for capsule synthesis (loci) were sequenced for all known pneumococcal capsule types (2). Subsequent studies have found that genetic information in the locus correlates well with serologic and biochemical data for the capsular polysaccharide (PS). Thus Ramelteon several well-described PCR protocols have been developed for serotyping purposes (e.g. see reference 3 and http://www.cdc.gov/streplab/downloads/pcr-oligonucleotide-primers.pdf; reviewed in reference 1) and it has become common to use genetic information to Ramelteon determine capsule serotypes. Genetic studies of serotype 6B have revealed two subgroups of loci that differ by >5% in the locus (4). The major subgroup was called class 1; the minor subgroup was called class 2 and has an ～300-bp indel element between and as its genetic hallmark. In addition the class 2 locus contains a 9-nucleotide (nt) in-frame deletion in and four open reading frames upstream of (5). Because of the stark genetic difference from class 1 it was suggested that class 2 may be a new serotype “serotype 6E” (6). Although the authors of this study concluded that “serologic and biochemical characterization” is needed to confirm it as a new serotype (6) the putative serotype 6E is being increasingly treated as a distinct serotype in publications describing its discovery in all parts of the world (5 7 –10) and its association with antibiotic resistance (7 10 Consequently a recent study stated that there is an urgent Ramelteon need to determine Mouse monoclonal to FYN the structure of capsular polysaccharide from the putative serotype 6E (10). Recently several serotype 6B reference strains from the Pneumococcal Molecular Epidemiology Network collection were found to have “serotype 6E” genetic loci (10). Furthermore SPEC6B which is used as the serotype 6B reference target strain for the multiplexed opsonophagocytosis assay (MOPA) (11) was found to have the genetic features of “serotype 6E” (unpublished information). As SPEC6B is extensively used in evaluating pneumococcal vaccine immunogenicity (12 –14) it became necessary to examine the PS structure made by SPEC6B. Here we demonstrate that SPEC6B has genetic features of “serotype 6E” but produces PS identical to that of serotype 6B in molecular structure. MATERIALS AND METHODS Genetic analysis by PCR. To detect the presence of indel PCR was performed using two previously described primer sets (forward primers 5106F [5′-TACCATGCAGGGTGGAATGT] and 5101F [5′-ATTTGGTGTACTTCCTCC] in independent reactions with primer 3101R [5′CCATCCTTCGAGTATTGC]) (8) and genomic DNA Ramelteon from SPEC6B MNZ2 and DS2212-94. SPEC6B has been described previously (11) DS2212-94 came from the CDC (Atlanta GA) and MNZ2 came from K. H. Kim (Ewha Womans University Seoul South Korea). DS2212-94 has a class 1 sequence (unpublished information) and we have previously determined that MNZ2 has a class 2 sequence. MNZ2 and DS2212-94 were included as the serotype 6B and “serotype 6E” control strains Ramelteon respectively. DNA sequencing of the SPEC6B locus. The SPEC6B locus was amplified in fragments and sequenced. A portion of the DS2212-94 cps locus (containing for 20 min) to remove debris contaminants were precipitated from the supernatants by sequential incubations (48 h at 4°C) with 30% and 50% ethanol with centrifugation (15 344 × for 20 min) after each incubation to remove debris. PS was precipitated from the supernatants by incubation for 48 h at 4°C in 80% ethanol. The precipitate was collected by centrifugation (15 344 × locus and partial DS2212-94 locus were deposited in GenBank under accession numbers “type”:”entrez-nucleotide” attrs :”text”:”KT907353″ term_id :”972268844″ term_text :”KT907353″KT907353 and {“type”:”entrez-nucleotide”.